Chapter Thirteen
Sometime around dawn, Natalie woke up. She was alone under the quilt that covered the bed, and she noticed that it had been tucked around her as she slept. From the downstairs portion of the guardhouse, she could smell coffee brewing, and after a moment of deliberation, she levered herself out of bed.
The air had a slightly cold feel to it, but her clothes were nearby. She was grateful that Patrick had thought to have her clothes sent for before they took their trip to Scotland. Now she could slip her nightgown over her head, letting it fall down in loose folds around her hips. She was still chilly, but at least now she was not completely bare.
Natalie descended the ladder carefully, and behind her, she heard Patrick give a low wolf whistle.
"That's a nice thing to see in the morning," he said, and when she had her feet on level ground again, she grinned at him.
"Is it nice enough to score some of that coffee you’re making?" she asked, and he pulled down a pair of stoneware mugs from the cupboards.
"Making coffee is at least something I can do, even if it is not as impressive as your chicken last night," he said. "Still, I intended to bring it to you when you had slept enough."
Natalie was touched by this simple gentle gesture. No other man that she had been with was half as courteous. She watched in bemusement as he prepared the coffee, dark with a splash of cream for him, cream and honey for her.
"You know how I take my coffee," Natalie said with surprise, and he shot her a knowing look.
"I paid attention when we got refreshments at work," he said. "I kept an ear out for yours."
She blushed, hiding her face by leaning down to sip at her coffee. It was boiled ferociously strong and very hot, but it suited her. She sat at the table, letting the drink warm her. She and Patrick felt into a companionable silence as they sipped their coffee together. There was no need for chatter. There was simply a peace that they found together, and something about it made Natalie feel wonderfully soft.
She watched through half closed eyes as Patrick paced with his coffee, finally coming to stand at the enormous set of windows that looked out to the ruins. He was so still that he could have been some soldier or king of a bygone age, appearing to look out over the ruins of what had once been his.
Natalie finished her coffee and went to wrap her arms around him from behind. There was a place between his shoulder blades that felt perfect for her cheek.
"Thank you for bringing me out here," she said quietly. "It's beautiful. I love being with you."
He made that purring sound again, and one large hand drifted down to touch her hands.
"Thank you for coming with me," he said. "I never get an excuse to come out to this property anymore, despite all the work I put in to it. Perhaps later on today, I'll bore you with some of my favorite renovation projects — both the ones that I did here on my own, and the ones that were completed decades and in some cases, centuries ago."
There was something diffident about the way he spoke. She could tell that the guardhouse was important to him, but he spoke about it as if it was something that couldn't possibly interest her. Natalie might not have been interested in old Scottish architecture for its own sake, but if someone she liked a great deal was interested in it, she would certainly make an effort.
And if someone she loved was interested in it...
The word struck her with the force of a blow, and even as she thought it, she knew it was true. Somehow, she had fallen in love with this impossible and generous man; one who was dramatically different from her, who lived his life at right angles to the way she lived hers.
"Natalie? Are you all right?"
Once again, he seemed to sense her moods. He turned around to look at her, setting his mug of coffee off to one side. Natalie looked up into his blue eyes, and she knew that that epiphany was true.
"I love you," she said simply, and she saw his gaze go to one of shock.
"I... I don't know what to say."
It was a little hurtful, but she wasn't surprised. She had just dropped one of the biggest revelations that one person could have for another, and she didn't blame him for being shocked.
"You don't have to say anything," she said, keeping her voice light. "Look, I know that the world has all sorts of expectations about that word. I know that. There's that old saying that women say it to trap men into marriage, and that men use it to trap women into sex. It's ugly, but there is at least a grain of truth to it because I have heard it happen so many times.
"Believe me when I say that I’m not trying to trap you anywhere. I promise you that. I am not trying to get you to do anything — or not to do anything — that you don't want to do. I love you very much, and no matter where we end up, I think I always will."
She smiled at him, because she did love him. After all, where was the harm in loving someone without complications, without strings and without promises?
Natalie reached up to wrap her arms around his neck, and he bent down to kiss her. The kiss was perhaps more solemn than what they had shared before, but there was a low thrum of pleasure and passion underneath it.
"Thank you," Patrick said when they broke apart. “I am not sure that I have ever been given a better gift."
She smiled at him, but there was a tiny part of her that wondered if he felt anything similar for her; if there was any kind of hope for them in the future.
***
Patrick shoved his hands deeper into his pockets as he watched Natalie range over the ruins. They were safe, had been declared so by an entire geological team, but there was something unnerving about watching the young American clamber up a pile of stone that had once been part of the curtain wall.
"For the love of God, be careful," he called. "I don't want to airlift you out of here if you make a miscalculation..."
She flashed him a bright grin that never failed to take his breath away. It was like watching the sun come out after a storm, bright and beautiful.
"Don't worry about me, Adair," she said with a laugh. "I was made to do this. Keep up if you can."
He grinned at her, but had absolutely no interest vaulting up the gray stone piles unless there was an absolute need to do so. He liked to think he was too sensible for all this, but then, what the hell was he doing in Scotland with a girl who was far, far too young for him?
It wasn't just age, Patrick had to admit. He had known plenty of women in their early-to-mid twenties, slept with a handful of them, and they could be just as cynical and world-weary as women his own age. Some of them had been making a play for his money, others had simply been curious to see if he was as good as rumors made him out to be.
At the end of the day, however, he had never seen anything special in a woman because of her age, and men who said that they did tended to be the kind he regarded with disgust or suspicion.
Patrick was coming to realize that it did not matter how old Natalie was. She could be fifty, and there was still a chance that she would be climbing up stone walls, trying to goad him into following her. She would always look around her with that kind of wonder, and she would always shine like a new-found penny.
And she was in love with him.
The words had stuck him with the force of a hammer hitting a nail. When she said them, his heart started beating hard, as if in recognition. All she had done was give him the words to speak out what he suspected he had known for some time now.
There was a reason that his heart felt lighter when he saw her. There was a reason he listened for her step in the corridor, and that sometimes, when he couldn't sleep, the best antidote was tiptoeing down to the library at the townhouse and matching his breathing to hers.
It might have been the worst decision that he could have made when he brought her home with him. She wrecked his peace, but she brought him joy. Life had erupted into color since she had come, and sometimes in his darker moments, Patrick could only look ahead to a time when she was gone.
Love.
He would be a liar if he said that it never occurred to him. He wasn't sure if he believed in it before he met Natalie.
The problem was, he thought, following her progress around the base of the castle, was that love meant two different things to them. For her, it was a river, flashing bright and quick as it traveled from here to there. For him, it was a house that one built with another person, something stable and solid, a place where they live.
Natalie was a wild girl. With her nomad's heart, could she ever truly be happy in Dublin with him? She might try, but it would be akin to forcing a wild bird into a cage. It would break her heart, no matter how beautiful he made the cage, and eventually, Patrick was smart enough to know that it would break his as well.
Suddenly she emerged from the ruins ahead. There was a small outbuilding of the castle that was still mostly intact, and Natalie appeared in the window of the second story.
"This is so wonderful," she called down to him. "These stones were cut from the earth centuries ago, and they are still here!"
"And you might disappear from the earth in an instant if you fall and break your neck," Patrick said warningly. "Be careful up there."
"I'm going to be careful," she responded, dangling her legs over the window ledge. "I just wanted to sit for a moment and wonder what life was like for another woman who saw the world and the sky from this window. Their lives would have been so different from ours, but they would have felt the same things, I think. They would love, they would fight, they would hate. All the same things."
"Read your history books," Patrick said tartly. "Life was nasty, brutish and short. Anything else was a fairytale."
She grinned down at him, undaunted by his curmudgeonly answer.
"I like to think that there was some magic and some love for them, even then. After all, they were still human."
She started to rise from her seat, but some of the rock must have shifted underneath her. With a shriek and flailing of limbs, she fell from the window, and Patrick rushed forward, his mind a blank white sheet of panic.
Oh God, I am going to watch the woman I love die...
The words were the only clear thing in his head, but then she fell into his arms as neatly as if they had rehearsed it. She was a trembling weight, hanging on to him, and for a moment, it felt as if she was never going to let him go.
Then she looked up at him, her face slightly pale but her black eyes luminous.
"People are amazing. You are amazing," she whispered, and for a moment, the words that had appeared in his mind almost fell out of his mouth. He had nearly lost her, and right now all he wanted to do was to tell her he loved her, that she should never try such a thing again.
Instead, Patrick leaned down and kissed her, a hungry thing that filled him with need. The adrenaline was just beginning to pull back from his system, and in its wake, it left a towering need for the woman in his arms.
"Are you okay?" he asked, and she nodded her assent. There was a flash of confusion as he did not put her down, but instead marched to the shelter of the ruined walls, still holding her in his arms.
"Patrick, I told you I was fine," she said in confusion. "I'm fine, I promise, not a single scrape on me thanks to you."
He laughed menacingly, and he could hear her shiver, cling to him a little tighter.
"I think girls that think they are too clever to ever fall need a good lesson in restraint," he growled, and she squirmed in his arms. He knew he was too strong for her, and when she came to the same realization, she drew her breath in. Her eyes were as deep and dark as ink when she looked up at him, and then he was lying her down in the shadow of the ancient stone.
"A lesson?" she murmured, and he grinned, coming to lie over her, their bodies tangled like a pair of gloves on the cool grass.
"One you will not soon forget," he murmured, kissing her soundly on the mouth.